Hello, fellow W.I.T.C.H. fans!

Welcome to chapter 12, at last :). Be prepared for some questions to be answered!

Enjoy!

The sun isn't supposed to be purple.

That was the first thought that went through my head as I entered one of the most beautiful and outlandish groves I had ever seen. Gently swaying grass reached just below my knees, and every once in a while, there was a grouping of the weirdest flowers in a splatter of colors. I knelt down next to a yellow and orange one to touch its octagon-shaped petals. They felt like silk between my fingers, soft and delicate. Above me, the trees surrounding the clearing created a leafy canopy, filtering just enough sunlight to create a calm, serene atmosphere. But sure enough, as I looked through another hole in the weaving of greenery, I saw the sky...and the violet-glowing sun.

A particularly bright ray of indigo-tinted sunlight had found its way through the thick overhang, reflecting off the slowly lapping water of a spring at the base of a tree. I approached it cautiously, still not entirely grasping when or how I had gotten to the grove in the first place. Acting on an impulse, I sat next to the water and dipped my hand in. Something about it made me feel...whole. Complete and aware of everything around me. Then the feeling faded, like a tablet dissolving in a glass of liquid.

"You felt the power of the Light of Meridian," came a voice next to me. I looked up, not even disturbed by the new presence of a girl no older than me, who now sat cross-legged at the place where the water washed into the moist ground. Her long, white-blonde hair was tied in two elaborate pigtails, each of which ended with silver rings, and her light blue eyes were so deep and wise that I had to reassess my previous evaluation of her age.

"Who are you?" I asked as she began pooling the springwater in her own hand and letting it seep through her fingers.

Her eyes met mine again. "I can't say. These boundaries won't let me do too much."

Even though I had no idea what she meant by "boundaries", I nodded and turned my attention back to the spring. "Where am I?"

"The Heart of Meridian." She said, gazing around at the grove proudly. "It's so much prettier in here than you would think once you've been to the actual Meridian, don't you agree?" She smiled coolly, as if it was a twisted joke, then brought her water-filled hand up to her face. "It gets old after a while, though. Once you've found every hiding place and secret passage, you realize it's not all it seems to be. Just a clearing with a nice setup."

Remembering that my hand was still in this girl's springwater, I retracted it. "Why are you here? Is the Heart of Meridian like the Heart of Kandrakar? Does the Heart of Kandrakar have a person inside it, too?"

She laughed, a cute tinkling laugh that I would imagine coming from a mermaid or a fairy. "No, I'm a special case. Like Will may have explained to you, every world has its own Heart. Even Earth does. I used to wear the Heart of my world in the form of a necklace as Will does." She gingerly put her slender fingers to her bare collarbone, her kind smile fading. "But now I'm trapped inside it."

I pretended to take a sudden interest in peeling the polish from my fingernails. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Listen," she put her hands on my shoulders, and I looked back up at her. "That's not why you're here. You need to save Meridian from Phobos. And in order to do that, you're going to need a little help. As soon as you wake up, draw what you saw here. And if you make a mistake, don't erase it. Just keep going until you're done. The picture will guide you. I can't tell you much, but if you do as I say, my world might still have hope yet."

My eyebrows knitted together. "I don't understand. Why-"

The girl put a finger to my forehead. "The answer you seek will be revealed in your art."

Then the grove faded away, and I was falling in darkness.

A few minutes later...

My eyes snapped open. The ceiling above me was made entirely of stone. If I didn't know any better, I would have said I was in a cave...

Wait. How was I in a cave?

The events of my last conscious memories rolled over me like a bulldozer. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to get them out of my head. There was something I had to do, something I needed to remember.

Paper! I needed paper! And a pencil. I had to draw that grove while it was still fresh in my mind.

But where was I? The last thing I recalled before I had passed out was landing on hard, sharp rock. Maybe I had appeared in the cave?

Yet that didn't explain why I was currently laying on something soft and somewhat cushiony. It felt like a bed covered in rough cotton sheets, one of which was pulled up to just below my ribcage.

I tried to sit up, and my head suddenly began pounding. "Holy crap!" I gasped, putting a hand to my forehead.

"Oh, no no no!" A woman whose plump face emanated kindness emerged out of nowhere and rushed to my side. "You must rest! One does not simply drink liquified fireshade and walk away like nothing has happened! No, you stay in bed." A weird accent made her sound like a cross between Italian and Spanish. She helped me stay sitting up like I was incapable of doing it myself, and put a cup to my lips before I had time to react. "There you go. Fireshade just takes it out of you, makes you weak. Ewan nectar will bring your strength back in no time!"

I hadn't the slightest idea what fireshade or ewans were, but the concoction the lady made me drink tasted like I had just thrown up in my mouth. When I gagged, she took it away. "I know, I know. It has a terrible taste, but you have to finish it." She pressed the cup back to my mouth. I took big gulps, careful not to let the taste process on my tongue. When it was gone, she smiled at me and gently set my head back on the pillow, which I could tell was stuffed with straw. "Now let that kick in and you'll be good as new in a few hours' time."

My eyes widened. "A few hours' time?" I squeaked. I didn't have a few hours! I needed to find a way out of here, despite how sweet the woman had been to me. I had no idea where I was, much less how long I had been asleep. And I needed to draw that grove!

She was about to reply when a new figure came into the room. "Thank you, Trylle. You may leave now." The masculine voice said gently. I squinted to get a better look at him as Trylle pushed my hair out of my face with a motherly smile and left the room. He was wearing simple trousers and a weird, incredibly out-of-date shirt. I guessed from this that Meridian was still behind the times. He looked familiar, but I still sat back up and braced myself.

Noticing my fear, he stopped about three yards away from me. "I'm not here to hurt you. Only to ask questions."

I didn't answer, though my body relaxed slightly. The pounding in my head had dulled to a low throbbing.

"I'm Aldarn, a friend of Caleb's." He told me, then waited for me to respond.

I took a deep breath, realizing why he looked so familiar. "You're part of the rebellion. I helped rescue Tynar that night."

Aldarn nodded. "I'm wondering if maybe you know where Caleb and the Guardians are. You know, since you have the Heart of Kandrakar."

I scratched my arm nervously. "Yeah. Um, about that..." How do you tell someone that his friend and the only people who could save him are in the thralls of an evil overlord? "They're kind of..."

Aldarn gave me a solemn look. "I see."

"But I think I know how to help them." I blurted. I couldn't stand seeing that disappointed expression on anyone's face.

He immediately brightened. "How?"

I pushed the sheet off my legs and swung them over the side of the cot. "I just need a pen - I mean, something to draw with. And paper, or whatever you have."

He raised an eyebrow, but nodded. "If it helps Caleb, then I will go get some. Don't go anywhere." And then he left the room.

I almost patted myself on the back. Not bad, Nina.

A few minutes later, Aldarn returned with a piece of parchment and, surprisingly, a pencil. I smiled at him and got down on the floor to use it as a hard surface. My limbs protested, but I ignored them and began to draw. This time my drawing was different; I let my hand guide itself across the blank paper, not even stopping when I knew I made a mistake with one of the branches of a tree in the grove. I tried to imagine the flowers, the grass, and let the memory of them seep into the picture. Yet no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't get myself to draw the image of the girl sitting by the spring. The whole time I was doing this, Aldarn looked curiously over my shoulder.

My hand stopped abruptly, and I searched the drawing for anything I might have missed. It was all there. I held it up to the light for Aldarn to see. "There's supposed to be a clue in here." I told him.

He squinted at it, trying to help me find it. "What kind of clue?"

"I don't know," I said, realizing that it might take hours before I found what I was looking for. My hopes deflated.

Aldarn cocked his head at it. "May I?" He asked, putting his fingers on the edges to take it from my hands. I nodded and let go. He examined it for the next five minutes, then set it back in my lap. "It looks sort of like a grotto Caleb and I used to explore all the time, but the placement's wrong. See here, where this group of flowers is?" He laid a finger on a spattering of the exotic plants to the right of the spring. "These should be over here, next to the carving." He traced a line to a bunch of rocks I hadn't noticed before, one of the etched with the faces of women wearing crowns.

I moved my face closer to the parchment. "Who are those people?"

"All of the former queens of Meridian." Aldarn pointed to the first face on the left. Though she was insanely beautiful, she had a rugged look about her, like she had fought many battles to get where she was. "This is Reana. She reigned from the time she was eighteen right up until the day she died. Her greatest achievements were stopping the wars with Elden and Brea, and she also helped rebuild the village after her brother went berserk with jealousy and destroyed a good portion of it."

"That sounds familiar." I muttered sarcastically.

Aldarn grunted and pointed to one of the last faces, a fresher, deeper indent in the rock. "Phobos and Elyon's mother, Weira. Queen and Light of Meridian from her fifteenth birthday until she disappeared when Phobos came to power almost sixteen years ago."

I traced her long, flowing hair, a familiarity blooming in my mind from the sight of her face. "She was pretty."

"Elyon inherited some of her looks." Aldarn stood, turning away like he had said something wrong.

I rose to my feet with him. "Tell me about Elyon. Do you know where she is now?"

He drew in a deep breath, and didn't answer for a few moments, like he was contemplating what he should tell me. "No one knows for sure, not even the Guardians. A few pessimists here believe her to be dead." His tone darkened. "I just think she's trapped somewhere, held prisoner by Phobos so he can feed off her power whenever he needs sustenance." He glanced back at me. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." I lied, though my brain was working at a million miles an hour. I think I just met Elyon!

Aldarn stared at the Heart around my neck. "We would have taken it from you, but I convinced them that if Will entrusted it to you, then we should trust you as she does. I hope that you don't prove me wrong."

"I promise I won't." I said sincerely. "I-"

Something down the hall exploded, cutting off my sentence and rocking the floor.

"You have got to be kidding me." I growled. First Kandrakar, now this! Couldn't I be somewhere for more than twenty minutes without something breaking or someone trying to kill me?

Aldarn ran to the door and poked his head out. "No!" He pulled himself back in and shut the door. "Cedric is here! You have to go!"

I backed into the wall behind me. "Holy crap." Another bang, this time closer to the door, echoed around the cave. I didn't even know if I had enough strength to open another portal.

Then everything went eerily quiet. Aldarn and I exchanged confused looks. He put a finger to his lips and pointed to a wooden medicine cabinet in the corner of the room. "The lower left shelf is a secret passage." He whispered.

"What about you?" I whispered back. My heart began pounding in my ears.

He shook his head. "If I have to die to keep the Heart of Kandrakar out of Phobos' hands, so be it. Now go!"

I bit my lip and obeyed, crouching low to crawl into the cabinet. A hole was cut in the wood of the back, and behind that was a small, dark tunnel. "Is there any light?"

He tossed me his flashlight, which I caught. "Thank you. For everything." I told him before closing the cabinet door.

Just in time, because at that moment, the door to the hospital room was crushed to splinters, and Cedric's roar nearly rendered me deaf.

Not too much action in this one, but it's essential to the plot.

Yay! Elyon contacted Nina!

But was it as a projection or from beyond the grave?

Find out in the chapters to come!

Thank you guys for reading and being so patient, and don't forget to review, follow, or favorite!